All That Is
by Memphis Lupine
Summary: [Faust X Eliza] Love and pain can drive a man to madness and the memory of old sins.


**Disclaimer: **All characters are owned by Takei Hiroyuki and the various companies that distribute the manga.

**Feedback:** Encouraged and adored, baby.  ^.-

**Continuity:** Before Faust meets Yoh (and the Gang) by some time.

**Dedication: **For Tia, in regards to Faust Week and St. Valentine's Day.

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**All That Is**

by **Memphis Lupine**

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It was the sharp copper taste of blood in his mouth, where the fragile skin of his upper lip had broken at the fervent press of his teeth: a metallic and warm liquid, and no more than a trickle.   Without much concern over the matter he touched and dabbed the blood away from his mouth, knowing (and not caring overwhelmingly) that it was a simple matter. 

      He had other things of far greater importance to worry over, old books to lay open beneath the light and stare desperately at, trying to pry what knowledge he could from the fading manuscripts.  Pale fingers splayed over the crumbling papers bound into a cracked leather tome, long knuckles gleaming as he twisted another page away impatiently.  Within had swelled, and long existed, a bitter intent for finding that one illusionary secret he _knew_ would bring life from death, that single shard that would make whole that which was shattered and strewn beyond his grasp.

      She would slip from his fingers, as the pages did when he shoved the book aside, frustrated, and it was not the leather-bound spine of the ancient book that snapped on the floor but her soul in his mind, breaking on the sleek wood into nothing.  He looked, bewildered and bloodshot and agonized, blinking down at the brown leather and the webbed yellow pages sliding from the broken binding in a slow, sighing breath as the air circulated.  The lights flickered, once, in emotional agreement with the unseen streams of air and blood in his mouth.

      Damn! to see that one broken book and feel the raging incoherent hopefulness-cum-hopelessness twist deep in the hollow of his thin, broad chest, and all but choke on the bitter needy want for the cure, for that one inescapably elusive knowledge _that must exist_.  He could not bear the thought that none of the books, none of the old quirks of his family's corrupt blood, none of the promises of _God_, could make it so he could save her again.

      Had he not saved her from the death fated upon her from birth?  Had he not taken contentment from the uneasy fact of his ancestor's sin and made a worthy life for her?  Had he not done all that was good and strong and _right_ only to be weak in that one moment when she was lost?  The irony was sharp, like the blood, and bitter, like the want; he had done more than any man should have been able to, and lost her still to blind chance.

      Or, perhaps, he thought in nervous agony, rocking up from his chair and spreading his hands out on the desk - white under the light, large and still delicate; perhaps this was all continuation of the damnation visited upon his ancestor.  The damnation his ancestor had _chosen_, a heinous corruption that could have persevered through the generations, made a heavenly and divine pestilence to infest his life since his own birth and damn her as well, twisting innocence in the womb to disease simply because she would love him.  

      Had he called murder down to her heart, to her breast?  To save her once he would lose her once, but he would not lose her, could not possibly afford to because there was nothing Eliza was not to him.  She was the light and the blood clotting his lip, the want and the irony and the book laying broken on the floor, pages strewn like _her_ blood across her clothing; she was the darkness and the illness in his strange soul that drove him deeper to madness, the seeking and the despairing lust for the renewal of life.

      He covered his face in his hands, and his shoulders trembled for a moment (the blood, the want, the longing for even her voice and knowing he would never be content with that alone); as the lights flickered again, he slid his hands down from his pale face, resting the fingertips on the pained swell of his mouth before reaching to gather the pages scattered over the floorboards.

**-end-**


End file.
